Myron B. Pitts: Red-light fines and fees are supposed to hurt

Sunday

Aug 13, 2017 at 11:13 AMAug 13, 2017 at 11:13 AM

I don’t run red lights, but I’ll sometimes run the heck out of a yellow. Or “amber” if you want to be fancy.

In our state it’s legal to go through a yellow light. In lead-foot ’Ville, going on yellow is always safer than stopping if someone’s behind you, because the driver behind is liable to smack into you otherwise. He is as likely as not to think a yellow means “let me try to make it,” and he is likely as not to assume you have the same beliefs. He will keep on truckin’, so you’d better, too.

Defensive driving, y’all.

However, we all know there are times when our gut tells us we are far enough away where the yellow likely will be red by the time we get into the intersection or, worse, go red just before our front tire hits the white stripe. The psychologists have a name for it, the “dilemma zone”: Speed up or brake? I’m more in the “speed up” camp. Just being honest.

But I can tell you at least one intersection where I treat a yellow light like the caution light it was created to be, and that’s Skibo and Morganton roads. Because they have red-light cameras.

Lots of folks didn’t get the memo. Red-light runners have the cameras flashing so much at the intersection, it looks like paparazzi.

And I’m thinking, “$100 for you, $100 for you,” and as a car whizzes by the intersection about two seconds after the light has turned, “Definitely $100 for you. Come on, dude.”

Those are the penalties the private company that operates the lights charges, and the tickets are mailed to the drivers. The company gets a cut and the city collects a cut which, by state law, must go to the schools.

Good system to me, so now you know they gotta go mess with it.

The Fayetteville City Council will at some point discuss potential changes in the amounts owed. The $100 fee will stay the same, but one idea is to ax the $100 late fee. The thinking is that this amount of fee is too much on the poorer folks.

I could support giving people more than 30 days before the late fee kicks in. But as for changing the penalty, here’s the deal. The poor folks don’t have to pay anything.

Neither do the rich folks, the middle-income folks or any of the folks in between.

Because all they have to do is … stop for the red light. Voila! No ticket.

Since the cameras went in last year, I must have been through the Skibo/Morganton Road intersection about 50/11 times — that’s urban-speak (or is it country-speak?) for “a whole lot.” And I haven’t gotten ticketed once.

Don’t get me wrong. I am sensitive to undue taxes and fees on people of low income. For instance, I am not a fan of increases in regressive taxes. If regressive tax increases were a rassler, I’d give him a bionic elbow like “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes.

These are taxes, like sales tax, to where you have to pay the same tax for a pack of nabs as Bill Gates does. The tax is a financial pinprick for you, but it’s microbial, less than a dust mite for him. If you’re really struggling, sales tax increases hurt and can make you drop items from your grocery list.

We don’t have a choice in paying sales taxes.

The same can’t be said of running red lights, a conscious choice by drivers to do something both dangerous and illegal (though the red-light camera tickets are civil violations).

The penalty needs to hurt to make a difference: $100 does that, $200 does it even more.

The power is all in the driver’s hands. Or rather in the foot: Hit the brakes — for real.

Columnist Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 486-3559.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.

Contact Us

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
The Fayetteville Observer ~ 458 Whitfield St., Fayetteville, NC 28302 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service